Paranoid Gynoid
by Vambot
Summary: Spontaneously hit by an enigmatic catastophe, the Earth has been shaken to rubble, broken machines and decay. Amidst the debris and mysteriously non-existant bodies awakes SF A2 Miki, the last of the Vocaloid2 series. The only "living" thing left...
1. ProLog

Spontaneously hit by a devastating catastrophe, the Earth has been shaken to rubble, broken machines and decay. Amidst the debris and mysteriously non-existant bodies awakes SF A2 Miki, the last of the Vocaloid2 series. The only "living" thing left, Miki is lost within the remains of what humanity left behind, and in order to discover what it means to be alive, Miki must first come face to face with death, and love. With her memories in discord and her experience low, she must recollect the pieces of the past to recreate the future.

Along the way she finds and reboots a terribly damaged, but incredibly wise Megpoid aka Gumi. Miki helps Gumi find her missing parts and the rest of her vocal data, all the while learning what it means to be connected to somebody. Overtime however, Miki becomes increasingly paranoid, as a form of holographic ghosts haunt her as she travels to find proof of life with Gumi.

she learns that not only is someone behind the entire scenerio, but that person may be closer than she thinks. If she can make the distinction between reality what the metaphysical.


	2. First RecordedAwareness: Arousal

A perpetual cloud of dust hung over the ruin. Grey, grey and more grey, and the tell-tale black markings of fire.  
A pipe wa sleaking coal-colored oil, and the sky was a void;  
An unending, dark span of brooding clouds and smoke.  
First, she moved her hand, pale against the rubble. There wwere sparks the color of what the sky once was.  
She moved her fingers.  
Grains of ash sifted out from between them to return to the Earth.  
She raised her upper body from the debris, red hair too silky to be real fell down her shoulders.  
In an upright position on the ground she examined the destroyed buildings with vacant eyes from which smoke rose up the the curdling sky.  
She took in the buzzing, jumping electricity that danced violently in small corners where wires split in two.  
That was it. She had been disconnected.  
Where were the people?  
If some sort of disaster had taken place, why were there no bodies?  
She stood up and took a steps, weeds singed beneath her boots.  
She bent down to pick them, but they died in her grey gloves.  
She was in her Eager Love Supercell attire, that she recognized by looking down at herself.  
SF A2 Miki. Vocaloid2 series.  
A sound met her senses.  
A sound.  
It was shrill and pierced the air around her.  
A gull, a wounded gull was dying on a sign advertising a tablet computer.  
singed katakana characters cradled its grey body.  
She bent down to lift it, searching for some sort of answer.  
It made another shrill cry, then fell silent and its head limped, dangling off her hand.  
What?  
She skipped over large chunks of plaster and concrete to prop the bird upright against a metal pole.  
She allowed her lips to form a crescent shape.  
"I think you prefer the shade better" she said, her voice clear and perfect. she paused. It was her voice.  
She had heard other voices before, many of them...  
She looked up at the skelton of a skyscraper draped with burnt plastic and creaking metal.  
The bird was silent.  
Even it had a voice, that was now no longer.  
She called out her own name, it was the only thing that wa ssure and unquestionable.  
She called it out in a melody, that danced over the macabre like an orb of light over darkness.  
It carried, and she listened the the delay of the echoe.  
"SF A2 Miki!"  
She was surely, unquestionably alone.  
She ran from the bird to climb up a filthy wall against which a rusty ladder lead up to half of a roof. She stood there.  
She let her eyes glide over what was once a thriving city of lights, sights and sounds.  
The past image fixed before her eyes. she compared it with what it was now.  
So different.  
She hopped down from the roof, and landed with a loud clang onto a sheet of steel.  
She followed the direction of a force that made the fried weeds move forward. It made lifeless tree branches sway.  
Wind.  
It took her down dark alley ways where liquids spilled from rotting pipes, making miniature black seas on the cracked asphalt.  
Her red hair trailed behind her as she moved forward, slow, then fast, then slow again.  
"SF a2 Miki!" she called, in lower notes.  
she came upon an open square where there were melted benches.  
She crawled along the grey floor, and found a small Nintendo DSI underneath one.  
Batteries dead.  
Where was the person who it belonged to?  
She dismissed the question and continued, expecting to see atleast the image of a person.  
None whatsoever.  
It was odd, being alone.  
But she wasn't really alone?  
There was no proof that she was.  
She had to keep searching...  
She climbed up, and jumped off of buildings.  
She'd glance up their tall, looming structures and dream electric dreams in her eyes.  
The images, when compared, were very different.  
Backing out of the umbra of one such building, she nearly lost equilibrium.  
Righting herself, she turned to look at the ground.  
"gu...gu..."  
A large, flat sheet of metal began to make sounds.  
Judging the look and size of the object, she did not expect it to emit such a soft, airy voice.  
She could not connect with anything wireless, All channels were cut, so she could not communicate with the object.  
Powerless, like the DSI.  
"gu...gu...gu..."  
Miki backed away from the object, and glanced around her, rapidly.  
Nothing.  
Something grey and animated began to wriggle from under the large sheet of metal.  
It has five digits that eache moved independenly.  
She looked at her hand.  
"SF A2-" she sung. She got on her knees, and wrapped her own digits tightly around the grey thing and pulled.  
Her strength allowed for miraculous things.  
A slender white arm...  
She pulled more.  
That was all. the arm hung from her hand, dangling.  
She dropped it, discouraged. "g..."  
She bent down to try and lift the metal.  
It came up, just a little.  
Black tank shirt, a flap of something green.  
The soft voice was clearer. 


	3. Second RecordedAwareness: Fragmental

She completely lifted the sheet of metal, triumphantly holding it in the air.  
Temporarily blocking the dim, polluted light.  
A face. A smile, and 2 knowing eyes.  
Green hair, goggles.  
The smile left the face.  
Megpoid Gumi sat up, raising one arm as if to brush off the other, realizing the arm was not there.  
She raised her gloved hand to her throat, opened her mouth and said "gu...?"  
"Is something wrong with your voice bank?" Miki asked.  
Gumi looked down at the ground, stood up and shook her head. She walked over to pick up her detached arm.  
after some work, she re-attached it.  
Moving her arm around she glanced at Miki and smiled confidently.  
A lime green sweater was tied around her waste, hanging over her grey cargo pants whose hems were tucked into black boots.  
She fixed her aviator goggles on her head and tossed one of the long tendrils in the front of her hair.  
The wind ruffled her green bangs.  
Gumi motioned for Miki to follow her.  
Miki nodded and followed her, not without glancing behind where she left the bird.

Gumi led her to an abandoned building complex with flickering lights inside.  
Things were strewn all about the floors.  
Gumi stomped over them into a very dark room. Miki followed, trying to catch up.  
Gumi stopped abruptly in the threshold of the room and glanced around. She found a sickly computer monitor.  
Gumi searched around in her pockets for something. Miki watched intently.  
With a grin, Gumi removed a long black tendril of wire from her pocket, plugged one end into the back of her neck, and the other into the USB port of the computer. The monitor died instantly as the energy was absorbed into Gumi.  
Gumi sat on a charred office chair and leaned her head back, closing her bright blue eyes. Miki watched her, wanting to know more.  
She wanted to know why Gumi had not said anything to her the whole time. She wondered how Gumi navigated so easily.  
She knew Gumi was just like her. A Vocaloid.  
She also knew she was not alone anymore.  
She kneeled before Gumi on the dirty, cracked tiles and rested her head on Gumi's warm legs.  
Her system went into sleep mode.  
She dreamed of electric sheep, peoples' faces, and the crease in the silicone where Gumi reattached her arm.


	4. Third RecordedAwareness: Temporary

A weak, white gleam dusted greyness about the ruins.  
Some of it peaked through a soot-covered window to dance on Gumi's sleeping face.  
Miki had woken from a strange dream.  
She had watched images of people she once knew smile and sing.  
The memories made her sense something new...It was just as monochromatic and ull as the surroundings.  
This sensation, or sentiment, was not one of joy.  
she gently touched Gumi's arm to wake her.  
Dust did acrobatics in a shaft of grey light.  
Miki watched them as Gumi rose up from the cracked tile floor.  
It was the second day of nothingness and remains.  
Miki walked out into the dead light to glimpse the desolate Earth.  
She looked around for any birds.  
None.

She and Gumi made a circle on the dirt with pieces of scrap metal that they found sprawled around.  
The two figures sat within it, and Miki began to sing quietly.  
Gumi's expression was one of deep contemplation. Her eyes were focused on nothing, but her hands were bunched in a fist.  
She began to draw in the dirt with a ruined aluminum fork.  
"We are alone" was inscribed in the ashes.  
Miki shook her head is disagreement.  
"It's true" Gumi etched.  
"You cannot know that for sure" said Miki, who stood up defiantly.  
"I'm sorry" was the reply written in the ash.  
"Hn?"  
Gumi smudged the words away, then wrote "My voice is gone, you were right. Also, I think everyone is gone".  
"Are you certain?' Miki asked.  
Gumi stood up and left the circle, where she placed the fork. She looked hard at Miki and nodded.  
Then Gumi smiled, took Miki's hand and led her around the unrecognizable city. Miki failed to understand Gumi.  
Was she in dissaproval or affirmation of the situaion?  
Were they really all alone as Gumi said?  
What would they do without other people being there?  
What would happen to them?  
Miki checked her system stats. Her energy wa salready on a decline.  
She looked up at the sky, to watch its lurking clouds move slowly, thickly, darkly.  
She climbed up on broken structures. Gumi sat on top of a all, slender structure upon which stood the remains of a giant bullhorn. A biohazard symbol was emblazened in cyan accross its no loner shiny black surface.  
Gumi's legs swung to and fro, dangling off the edge.  
She was looking down at Miki, wordlessly.  
Miki wanted to be by Gumi's side, so she began to climb untill she was.  
She placed her hand on Gumi's.  
"I'm...sad?" she muttered more to the wind than to Gumi. Her own voice, those words, surprised her.  
It was never something she had to say before, without it being in a song.  
She suddenly realized that she was sad, truly sad. Everything was gone, and pretty soon, the things she cherished now had to leave as well. It wa sonly logical that the chain of events would take that final course.  
What happened when she ceased to be?  
Would she just sleep, and dream forever, or not exist?  
She was sad because ultimately, she was afraid.  
She understood then that fear could induce sadness, if that was what she felt.  
She knew she was afraid, because now she threw her frail arms around Gumi's shoulders.  
Gumi's eyes were wide; a breeze tousled her green hair and shook her synthetic eyelashes.  
A silence ensued between them.  
Miki felt that something inside her was going to pour out. She wanted so badly to hear Gumi's voice!  
It was slightly overwhelming. For about an hour they simply gazed at eachother, remembering the shapes of human faces, and silently asking questions they did not yet know that they had.

"My energy is getting low" said Miki after a while. They were searching for a working computer or a building that still had electricity. Miki's movements were becoming delayed, and her thought processes short.  
Worst of all, her voice was not as loud and crisp.  
Gumi seemed worried, as she was, as usual the most active. Despite her low energy, she was climbing, hopping and running.  
Miki followed Gumi into what wa sonce a school. An overturned kanji was the only means of telling.  
There, a few lights were actually running. Gumi's smile was wide, and she ran to the nearest wall jack.  
She crouched down and waved Miki over.  
Miki nearly toppled on top of Gumi, in fact, she did, she was so exhausted.  
Her servo system was pretty much failed.  
Gumi plugged in Miki without a single hesitation, so that she could be next.  
Miki's eyes were open to look up at Gumi, whose lap was where her head rested.  
Miki's hand moved up to where a heart would be a in a human.  
Gumi watched this gesture intently.  
"I want you to get your voice back".  
Gumi knew this already.  
Miki raised her hand up, feeling her vitality returning. She placed her hand on Gumi's cheek.  
"Promise me, this will change" said Miki.  
Gumi nodded, then leaned against the bruised wall.  
Before she could close her eyes, she moved from the wall to glance at it. Miki sat up, the wire sliding down her shoulder to the ground, still plugged in.  
A shape was there on the wall.  
Something like 5 black dots above a series of other biomorphic prints.  
A gentic pattern could be seen in one of these spots, etched in the grey of the wall.  
Gumi placed her hand over the marking, it covered it 100%.  
Miki's eyes widened.  
"Someone's hand!".  
Gumi met her eyes, curious.  
"Maybe, maybe someone was here and left this mark to let us know to go and find them".  
Miki squeezed Gumi's hand with both of her own.  
Gumi was without words.  
She traced the shape on the wall with her gloved index finger.  
A ray of dim sunlight gleamed off of the goggles on her head.  
That same ray also highlighted her eyes.  
A hole in the wall behind rows of desks allowed this.  
"Someone was here, someone who can take care of us, someone who wants you to sing".  
Gumi smiled.  
It made Miki smile too.  
An impending night was approaching.  
After they both recharged, the sun was becoming weaker.  
The lights in the skeletal classroom became dimmer, and started flickering.  
Electricity was scarce.  
Miki made a mental note of the location, just in case. They left in hopes of finding more evidence of Life. 


	5. Fourth RecordedAwareness: Memory

The temperature had dropped only a few degrees.  
It was a warm night, and they had searched to no avail.  
Gumi searched every little detail of the terrain; under over, next to, in light, in shade.  
Miki copied her.  
She followed her every move and did what Gumi did, as she would have done before the world went black.  
Perhaps if both of them worked hard enough to fix things, it would happen.  
It was her hope. The people were right there, at the tip of her meory, just waiting to return.  
It made her smile as she searched for evidence with Gumi.  
The light grew dim, so gumi abandoned searching to find a new shelter.

Stopping near a building was dead neon signs that read out KOKORO_BEAT, Gumi and Miki sat down on the wounded concrete. Gumi began to dig through her pockets. The wire snaked onto the ground in a black coil.  
Next she found a small, heart shaped computer chip that hung on a rubber spaghetti bracelet.  
Gumi placed it in Miki's hands as she dug for more.  
Miki stared at the little black heart that was decorated with green cricuit board patterns.  
Gumi pulled out a small card next.  
A credit card?  
A train card?  
Gumi tossed it before Miki could know.  
Soon enough, Gumi was refilling her pockets back with the more important items. The chip and the wire.  
"Are we going into the place?" Miki asked.  
Gumi nodded.

They stepped inside. Something was making an awful, moaning sound. DRawing nearer, Miki dashed to its source.  
It was a voice, a terrible voice that was distorted and inhumanly low in pitch.  
Through the dark, her hands groped and found a damaged stereo system.  
She knelt before it, and hugged it with all her strength.  
It cracked and crumbled in her arms.  
The pieces scattered on the floor.

Gumi joined her after a few minutes of them being apart. She came back with glow sticks shaped like leeks. White with green tips.  
So many fragmented memories came filling Miki's system.  
Gumi's smile showed that she too, shared the memories.  
Miki wanted Gumi to show her more, however.  
She felt that her brand new and exciting feelings with her were not mutual.  
She waited for Gumi to wrap her arms around her.  
She closed her eyes.  
She opened them.  
Gumi was far off, exploring the other items in the place.  
Miki's heart, if she had one, sank.  
Momentarily.

They coiled together in a cemi circle of glass bottles.  
Sake...Wine...Beer.  
Glasses, shot glasses, broken glass.  
The seat of a stool was used as a pillow by Gumi, for no particular reason.  
Their two bodies were surrounded by broken glass, glittering spoons and dusty shadows. Gumi's blue eyes were blinking, and her lips opened and closed wordlessly, as if she were pretending to sing.  
Miki then, in a clear, but sad voice, began to sing a song without words. A song without lyrics, but whose notes held the weight of the world, and its end.  
Gumi stopped blinking in the dark, the glow sticks around and on them like sakura petals.  
Miki's voice carried around them, and gave light to the vacant, half finished bottles of liquor.  
Gumi parted her lips again.  
A voice, soft as air, soft as spring glass, soft as fresh snow, began to embellish Miki's raspier one.  
Their voices carried in harmony, telling the last tale of human life,  
or at least, almost human.  
Perhaps someone wanted this.  
Perhaps, it was up to SF A2 Miki and Megpoid/Gumi to sing within it. The new world. The last world, maybe.

In the shadows, something was moving in the wind and dust, far off from the two singing Vocaloids.  



	6. Fifth RecordedAwareness: Endpoint

The shadow moved, unbeknownst to the two Vocaloids,  
who, without them realizing it,  
hopes withered.

Miki was filled with a silent sense of surprise when she reopened her eyes to find that she was still lying down coiled up with Gumi surrounded by the broken bottles of alchohal and glowsticks.  
The dark was no colder than it was before, when the two were singing their lamentful song.  
She was almost somewhat disappointed.  
She had thought that in that moment of naked hoelessness, she'd be inseperable from Gumi.  
She and Gumi would sing, sleep and dream together for a long long time.  
There was a word for a long time that did not end.  
At the moment, however, she could not formulate the word in her conciousness.  
Gumi sat up.  
"Gu...uuuuuuuuu" she sang aloud in that single syllable.  
The two stood up, brushing off glass shards from ther soft skin and messied clothes.  
This time, it was Miki who led the way, leaving what had been a nightclub of somesort into the open.  
She then back against the wall, and wrapped her own arms around herself.  
The wind carried with it a sense of uncertainty and fear as it brushed against her white arms.  
Gumi joined her outside of KOKORO_BEAT, but she still felt the strange new feeling.  
It had become very dark out, but not enough to exstinguish their vision.  
Miki remembered the hand print on the wall of the school building.  
It made singing seem obselete.  
Did someone already know that they were wandering around the broken city for just a single clue or vestige of human, or even animal life.  
Any form of existance to solidify her own would make Miki smile.  
For now, she could not.  
Gumi began to use what little of her voice she had again.  
Her melodies were short and dilatory.  
They lacked any trace of feeling that life would imprint in the notes of music.  
Notes that exist, and we only enhanced and pulled out from the darkness by humans through instruments.  
Instruments like guitars, synthesizers...and Vocaloids.  
Miki wondered if the humans saw herself and Gumi and the other Vocaloids as instruments.  
She wondered if she herself saw Gumi as one.  
when she looked at Gumi, who sauntered over rubble and the corpses of machines, she saw a friend.  
She saw an entity that was seperate from herself and the world around them both.  
Did gumi see her the same?  
"Gumi-chan, how do you see me?" she asked, abortively.  
Gumi stopped suddenly.  
Two aquamarine jewels stared back at Miki.  
Silent, empty, two abysms of questions and unknown ponderings.  
"Do you see me as a guitar, or a synthesizer? Or do you see me as a...friend?"  
Gumi was so still, it looked as if she were frozen, or if someone had powered her down mid-stare.  
"For synthesizer, jump, for friend, sing!" said Miki, using her sharp, quick rationality.  
Gumi was still.  
Miki felt odd all of sudden, as if she were being watched even through her surface.  
As if something was staring so far into her, it would swallow her very existance.  
she glanced away from Gumi.  
The frame of her vision took in the dark landscape of hulking black masses and grey earth.  
Did someone hear her thoughts?  
Did they deem her an affectation of human life?  
A simulated failure of it?  
A meaningless approach to it?  
Her voice bank the mockery of a larynx?  
It was awful.  
"Gumi!" she cried, images of the world before filling her mind to the brim at lightening speed.  
"Gumi!" she cried again, this time reaching her hand out towards her friend.  
She shut her eyes, they could only shut ever so gently so as not to be ruined.  
Her feelings inside were like masses of metal grinding against each other, like gears on Diesel fuel,  
but her actions were gentle, hard, but so very gentle.  
That was just how she was wired.  
she was not made to cause harm to either herself or anyone else.  
What she felt inside was beyond her body.  
The sun was gone.  
Gumi was contiguous to her again.  
Miki could barely feel her like she wished she could.  
"Gumi...what is the matter?"  
gumi collapsed next to her with a smile, she could barely make it out. Her vision became pixelated.  
"Energy?"  
Gumi nodded.  
Miki immediately bent down, took Gumi's good hand and pulled her back into the KOKORO_BEAT building.  
At least they were safe inside.  
Safe from what?

"Is there is USB jack in this place? There must be, maybe" siad Miki,  
Gumi was propped against the wall, juxtapose to a hologram base machine.  
Of course it no longer worked.  
Miki kept glancing all around her, so fast her perception started to delay, like a bad camera.  
Her frames became limited and less smoothe.  
She realized that she was using up large amounts of her own energy, which was little.  
She and Gumi had to be intelligent about their energy consumption, since they had to share any left over or accessible electricity.  
Whatever their states before the current state of the world, their energy had been quite low already.  
She found a small, but still sleek laptop in a back room filled with wires and screens that was either dead or approaching death.  
She left the room brusquely, wearing a fluctuating smile, and skidded to Gumi's side.  
A plume of dust rose in the dark, dimming some of the glow sticks that littlered the floor. She opened the glistening red net book, hoping to see the bright, heavenly light of the screen turned on.  
The power of hope must be real.  
She and Gumi were both bathed in a serene, electrical light.  
Miki gently went into Gumi's pocket for the wire.  
She was illumined by hope.  
She plugged in one end of the wire.  
Then, brought the other end to the back of Gumi's neck, moving some strangs of her hair away from the port...  
She plugged it in, and waited with a broad smile.  
Loading up...  
She glanced at the computer screen, which was just white.  
Pure white like...  
clouds,  
before they became tufts of soiled cotton.  
Volcano ash.  
What were volcanoes?  
Mountains with lava inside.  
Were their any in Japan?  
Of course,

Gumi, please hurry up! she thought.  
She hated to feel alone.  
Eversince she found Gumi stuck under that huge sheet of metal and spent days and nights with her,  
she noticed the existance of loneliness.  
Why?  
Because she felt what it was like to have company, specific company.  
Company that was scarce and had to be depended upon.  
She felt lonely, and again, that strange feeling of uncertainty and fear as if someone were glaring at her from all directions.  
She panned the darkness, she scoped the black shadows, she drew herself closer to the net book's light.  
Gumi...  
Gumi's eyes were closed.  
she looked so...real and serene.  
She looked...Miki searched for a way to describe how Gumi looked as she lied there, reacharging.  
Beautiful.  
For a few moments she felt better.  
She focused her attention to Gumi for 2 hours without interruption.  
Any thoughts of fear were intermittent, and had little affect on her.  
She nestled up against Gumi, who was motionless, but warm.  
She took Gumi's hands and wrapped them round her own chest, and held them there, tightly.

Her internal clock had been damaged, so she did not know the real time. Her system showed the same "20:12" at all times, no matter the time.  
Using logic, she decided to find a more natural way to tell the time, and decided to keep track of the days by the sun and moon.  
She dismissed the importance of hours.  
Hours went by too quickly.  
They proved nothing to her.  
Gumi...  
She began to sing Gumi's name.  
She felt that feeling again, an intense feeling towards Gumi, even in the darkness.  
She sang more, comforted by the reassurance of a voice.

What happened to the world?  
Why was it that she and Gumi were the only ones for meters upon meters upon meters?

Everything was gone.  
Imprints of skeletons without the actual skeletons.  
Proof of things that were, but no traces of them.

The same questions repeated over and over in her mind.  
It was not good at all.  
And solved nothing.

Everything was gone. 


	7. Sixth RecordedAwareness: Defunct

The shadow moved, unbeknownst to the two Vocaloids,  
who, without them realizing it,  
hopes withered.

Miki was filled with a silent sense of surprise when she reopened her eyes to find that she was still lying down coiled up with Gumi surrounded by the broken bottles of alchohal and glowsticks.  
The dark was no colder than it was before, when the two were singing their lamentful song.  
She was almost somewhat disappointed.  
She had thought that in that moment of naked hoelessness, she'd be inseperable from Gumi.  
She and Gumi would sing, sleep and dream together for a long long time.  
There was a word for a long time that did not end.  
At the moment, however, she could not formulate the word in her conciousness.  
Gumi sat up.  
"Gu...uuuuuuuuu" she sang aloud in that single syllable.  
The two stood up, brushing off glass shards from ther soft skin and messied clothes.  
This time, it was Miki who led the way, leaving what had been a nightclub of somesort into the open.  
She then back against the wall, and wrapped her own arms around herself.  
The wind carried with it a sense of uncertainty and fear as it brushed against her white arms.  
Gumi joined her outside of KOKORO_BEAT, but she still felt the strange new feeling.  
It had become very dark out, but not enough to exstinguish their vision.  
Miki remembered the hand print on the wall of the school building.  
It made singing seem obselete.  
Did someone already know that they were wandering around the broken city for just a single clue or vestige of human, or even animal life.  
Any form of existance to solidify her own would make Miki smile.  
For now, she could not.  
Gumi began to use what little of her voice she had again.  
Her melodies were short and dilatory.  
They lacked any trace of feeling that life would imprint in the notes of music.  
Notes that exist, and we only enhanced and pulled out from the darkness by humans through instruments.  
Instruments like guitars, synthesizers...and Vocaloids.  
Miki wondered if the humans saw herself and Gumi and the other Vocaloids as instruments.  
She wondered if she herself saw Gumi as one.  
when she looked at Gumi, who sauntered over rubble and the corpses of machines, she saw a friend.  
She saw an entity that was seperate from herself and the world around them both.  
Did gumi see her the same?  
"Gumi-chan, how do you see me?" she asked, abortively.  
Gumi stopped suddenly.  
Two aquamarine jewels stared back at Miki.  
Silent, empty, two abysms of questions and unknown ponderings.  
"Do you see me as a guitar, or a synthesizer? Or do you see me as a...friend?"  
Gumi was so still, it looked as if she were frozen, or if someone had powered her down mid-stare.  
"For synthesizer, jump, for friend, sing!" said Miki, using her sharp, quick rationality.  
Gumi was still.  
Miki felt odd all of sudden, as if she were being watched even through her surface.  
As if something was staring so far into her, it would swallow her very existance.  
she glanced away from Gumi.  
The frame of her vision took in the dark landscape of hulking black masses and grey earth.  
Did someone hear her thoughts?  
Did they deem her an affectation of human life?  
A simulated failure of it?  
A meaningless approach to it?  
Her voice bank the mockery of a larynx?  
It was awful.  
"Gumi!" she cried, images of the world before filling her mind to the brim at lightening speed.  
"Gumi!" she cried again, this time reaching her hand out towards her friend.  
She shut her eyes, they could only shut ever so gently so as not to be ruined.  
Her feelings inside were like masses of metal grinding against each other, like gears on Diesel fuel,  
but her actions were gentle, hard, but so very gentle.  
That was just how she was wired.  
she was not made to cause harm to either herself or anyone else.  
What she felt inside was beyond her body.  
The sun was gone.  
Gumi was contiguous to her again.  
Miki could barely feel her like she wished she could.  
"Gumi...what is the matter?"  
gumi collapsed next to her with a smile, she could barely make it out. Her vision became pixelated.  
"Energy?"  
Gumi nodded.  
Miki immediately bent down, took Gumi's good hand and pulled her back into the KOKORO_BEAT building.  
At least they were safe inside.  
Safe from what?

"Is there is USB jack in this place? There must be, maybe" siad Miki,  
Gumi was propped against the wall, juxtapose to a hologram base machine.  
Of course it no longer worked.  
Miki kept glancing all around her, so fast her perception started to delay, like a bad camera.  
Her frames became limited and less smoothe.  
She realized that she was using up large amounts of her own energy, which was little.  
She and Gumi had to be intelligent about their energy consumption, since they had to share any left over or accessible electricity.  
Whatever their states before the current state of the world, their energy had been quite low already.  
She found a small, but still sleek laptop in a back room filled with wires and screens that was either dead or approaching death.  
She left the room brusquely, wearing a fluctuating smile, and skidded to Gumi's side.  
A plume of dust rose in the dark, dimming some of the glow sticks that littlered the floor. She opened the glistening red net book, hoping to see the bright, heavenly light of the screen turned on.  
The power of hope must be real.  
She and Gumi were both bathed in a serene, electrical light.  
Miki gently went into Gumi's pocket for the wire.  
She was illumined by hope.  
She plugged in one end of the wire.  
Then, brought the other end to the back of Gumi's neck, moving some strangs of her hair away from the port...  
She plugged it in, and waited with a broad smile.  
Loading up...  
She glanced at the computer screen, which was just white.  
Pure white like...  
clouds,  
before they became tufts of soiled cotton.  
Volcano ash.  
What were volcanoes?  
Mountains with lava inside.  
Were their any in Japan?  
Of course,

Gumi, please hurry up! she thought.  
She hated to feel alone.  
Eversince she found Gumi stuck under that huge sheet of metal and spent days and nights with her,  
she noticed the existance of loneliness.  
Why?  
Because she felt what it was like to have company, specific company.  
Company that was scarce and had to be depended upon.  
She felt lonely, and again, that strange feeling of uncertainty and fear as if someone were glaring at her from all directions.  
She panned the darkness, she scoped the black shadows, she drew herself closer to the net book's light.  
Gumi...  
Gumi's eyes were closed.  
she looked so...real and serene.  
She looked...Miki searched for a way to describe how Gumi looked as she lied there, reacharging.  
Beautiful.  
For a few moments she felt better.  
She focused her attention to Gumi for 2 hours without interruption.  
Any thoughts of fear were intermittent, and had little affect on her.  
She nestled up against Gumi, who was motionless, but warm.  
She took Gumi's hands and wrapped them round her own chest, and held them there, tightly.

Her internal clock had been damaged, so she did not know the real time. Her system showed the same "20:12" at all times, no matter the time.  
Using logic, she decided to find a more natural way to tell the time, and decided to keep track of the days by the sun and moon.  
She dismissed the importance of hours.  
Hours went by too quickly.  
They proved nothing to her.  
Gumi...  
She began to sing Gumi's name.  
She felt that feeling again, an intense feeling towards Gumi, even in the darkness.  
She sang more, comforted by the reassurance of a voice.

What happened to the world?  
Why was it that she and Gumi were the only ones for meters upon meters upon meters?

Everything was gone.  
Imprints of skeletons without the actual skeletons.  
Proof of things that were, but no traces of them.

The same questions repeated over and over in her mind.  
It was not good at all.  
And solved nothing.

Everything was gone. 


	8. Seventh RecordedAwareness: NEL

"Like defective parents they bring us into the world-  
as wide-eyed, curious children who strive to grow up like them And then when we reach the point of not needing their hands to walk anymore They throw us away and call us DEFECTED".

It was as if the words had been festering inside of Gumi for days upon days.  
Had she been aware before Miki?  
Before Miki woke up into the Broken World,  
Was Gumi already roaming?  
Miki began to rationalize:  
Gumi possibly went wandering as the destruction was still young and faulty.  
She wandered into the wrong area,  
having a large sheet of metal fall on top of her riveting her to the ground.

It was nighttime, and the two Vocaloids had been wallowing into contemplation for hours.  
They were using a pile of glowsticks as light Around which they sat in a circle Like two, opposite particles revolving around the nucleus of an atom.

"I have never been aware of these...sentiments before the destruction of Earth"  
Gumi's voice came sweet, but earnest.  
"I was not able to express them in words,  
since my voice bank was damaged.  
The data was ruptured but I managed to restore it".  
Gumi's eyes were focused elsewhere.  
"Still, I feel that we are not human and never will be even in this state of humanity.  
We are the last bipeds but not the last humans.  
We are still just imitations.  
But we are improved versions of them.  
We can choose to be rational only.  
We can do things perfectly.  
Untainted by feeling".

"Not any longer" said Miki.  
"I have lost much control.  
Eversince obtaining feelings.  
I have found myself to be difficult to control.  
Is that why we are left here by our masters?  
We are unable to be controlled anymore?"

"Your questions and assumptions are valid" said Gumi.  
Polluted wind rustled her hair.

In seconds, the sky was illuminated by a far off fire and a loud sound that shook the ground and rattled the debris-  
A propane explosion. After the first one about 4 more erupted consecutively.  
Miki threw her arms around Gumi who did not move.  
"That is the answer" said Gumi.  
"I do not comprehend", Miki.  
"An explosion such as that was what pinned me down after a first explosion, which I did not see.  
All networks had been severed in those moments.  
Defective".

"who caused it?" Miki inquired.  
"Who made it" was Gumi's reply.  
Miki did not have to think long for the answer.  
Humans made it.  
Humans caused it.

Humans tried to avoid hurting the Earth.  
But it was too late, and not enough people helped.

Just as the humans had dug too deep into something new and exciting,  
So did Miki, who was now inflicted with emotions.  
Possibly more emotions than Gumi.  
She could count the different ones.  
Could Gumi?

"Gumi-chan..." she paused, smiling at saying her name in such a friendly manner.  
"How many emotions do you have?"

There was a silence as fire crackled in the distance.  
"I have... 3".  
Gumi layed down.  
"We are wasting energy" she said.  
"Goodnight".

"But we should go inside where it is safe" said Miki.  
"That explosion was very lethal. It could dissintegrate us too".

The two vocaloids picked up the glowsticks and carried them into KOKORO_BEAT, the cyberdelic nightclub they had been using as shelter much longer than any other building location.

So much information had been sifted up from the ash and ailing soil.  
So much that both the vocaloids were too exhausted to sing.  
They lingered heavily on thoughts something they scarecely possessed before.

A shadow moved beyond the garmentless doorway.  
Both Vocaloids were asleep.

They woke up at midday.  
The sun was almost entirely eclipsed by a heavy pollution cloud.  
As Miki woke, lying down next to Gumi who had wrapped her arms and legs around her waist (Miki smiled)  
She glimpsed an ant...  
far off on the floor near a tall cemi-circle shaped table top.  
It crawled in a confused manner,  
bumping into the legs of chairs.  
Her interest was piqued, she sat up \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  
and wastched the ant without zooming in on it, to conserve energy.  
Gumi fell limply with a soft thud on the ground, still on sleep.  
Miki stood up, hopped over to where the ant was, and stepped.  
Crunch.  
She moved her boot from over the spot.  
There were little bits of black exoskeleton, circuits, wires and tiny gears and axels.  
It had not been a real ant.  
What was that doing there?  
She replayed the ant's movements when it was still active in her system.  
It had not moved like a real ant either.  
She compared that frame with a frame from the past of a natural ant.  
Very different, besides the location which made it harder to differentiate.  
What was the imitation ant doing there?  
Were there more?  
What were they there for?  
When Miki turned around She saw Gumi propped up on the floor Rays of dim, brownish sunlight waltzing in through the doorway.  
"We should continue looking for life" she said.  
Miki was frozen in her place.  
"Gumi I...".  
She glanced down, her expression plastic.  
"What, Miki?" asked Gumi.  
"I stepped on-"Miki paused.  
Gumi stood up, and walked over to where Miki was.  
She saw the heap of machine guts.  
"What was this?" Gumi asked.  
"An ant" said Miki.  
She curled into foetal position on the floor below Gumi.  
What would Gumi do?  
Did she know what to do?  
Only the masters would know...  
"We are alone again, Gumi-chan" said SF A2 Miki.

They quitted KOKORO_BEAT.

Outside in the whirling grey, and brown and black and chrome,  
The 2 of them continued on, leaving the nightclub behind for good.  
Gumi had packed some of the glowsticks in her pockets, Miki did the same.  
She finally had inventory, it made her feel more like a human,  
if that was what she still wanted to be like.  
She had looked up to Gumi since the beginning, since Gumi was the closest Vocaloid to human.  
Even her voice, it was so soft and natural-sounding to her.  
Gumi was so green, so bright against the surroundings.  
Though her clothes were getting dusty, Gumi still glowed.  
Miki twirled around, seeing her red-orange hair flit past her vision every now and then.  
She was bright too.  
Miki took hold of Gumi's hand and drew closer to her.  
She felt as if she was being targeted.  
Being watched from somewhere unseeable.  
She could not right herself by connecting to satellites.  
All connections were down, not working.  
Tall, looming corpses of buildings were above them.  
Towards the ehart of one area,  
there were the alien shapes of car skeletons, and little fires growing like plants in small areas.  
There was an area where the ground was glass and pieces of glass,  
with the dry crust of salt, and vacant little cubicles.  
Telephone lines had melted down, and dropped low on the ground.  
They sparked and fizzled out.  
No one else.

a sound like a tiny motor started up First it was far off in the ashy distance then it got louder.  
A swarm?  
Miki leaned forward, her equilibrium keeping her from falling.  
gumi pulled her back by the collar.  
"What is that?" Gumi's soft, airy voice filled the air.  
It echoed, the buzzing increased.  
"More ants?"  
There were more ants.  
Since neither Miki nor Gumi knew what the best possible choice to make would be, they both turned on their heels and ran.  
After sometime Gumi stopped.  
Miki, she kept going.  
"SF A2 Miki!" Gumi yelled.  
The buzzing got louder and louder as Miki ran.  
"...Miki!".  
The sky was being encircled by black clouds swarms of black clouds something was after her.  
Watching her.  
"...miki...".

Miki's vision pixelated.  
She was descending,  
Her legs grew weak.  
Yet she was not worn out.  
She tripped over a leaking pipe, and crashed against something.  
Surprisingly, its surface was detected as soft.  
She was not damaged.  
She was on the ground though.  
There was dirt on her smoothe silicone skin.  
Footsteps approached as the buzzing died down.  
"Miki!" shouted Gumi.  
Gumi skidded to a halt and stepped on Miki's back as a punitive.  
"Why did you do that?" she demanded.  
"They were after me" was Miki's reply.  
"Whos is they?"  
"the ants"  
"There are no ants! your systems are DEFECTIVE!".

Was that why Miki could not get closer to Gumi?  
Because Miki was defective?  
"Gumi-chan...".  
"Don't sing that way, you are pretending to be sad to make me sad"  
"No. I am sad. I do not know why I ran, because I do not know why I believed someone was chasing me".  
It was silent.  
Miki looked up at what she fell against.  
The view shocked her, and Gumi followed her glance.  
The thing was large, long and white with glossy round windows that were cracked and covered in ash.  
Miki pinched the surface of the vehicle.  
It was made of the same thing as her skin.  
Its wheels were rotated inwards, unlike a regular American car.  
Her systems identified it as the Honda Puyo.  
"A car" said Gumi.  
"People?" asked Miki?  
The vocaloids scrambled for the doors. Gumi pulled the handle.  
The doors rose upwards.  
Inside was compact, allowing about 4 passengers.  
Passengers? None.  
Gumi stared for a while.  
She hopped into the drivers seat.  
Miki followed suit and sat in the back.  
Was is defective or usable?  
Gumi turned back to look at Miki.  
"Search for the keys".

Miki hopped out of the wrecked but cozy Puyo car and began to search the area for a key. She searched for a bout an hour.  
"My energy has depleted" she told Gumi after she finished searching.  
She dropped a set of keys into Gumi's soft, gloved hand.  
Gumi sang Love is War under her breath and she fiddled with the keys.  
Miki took the back seat again.  
In moments, the car rumbled to life.  
Life!  
Miki hugged the car seat with all her might.  
It was atleast something.  
"We're going to drive back to KOKORO_BEAT"  
"Why?" Miki asked.  
"To get the net book".

The car was able to spin in one spot with its four rotating wheels. Gumi stopped quickly in order to sustain energy.  
Miki ran into KOKORO_BEAT for the dead net book. In the dim light it looked purple.  
Miki dropped in on the seat next to her's in the back.  
Gumi had the doors close down.  
They found soemthing better than an empty shelter.  
A shelter that moved.  
And was soemthing like them.  
Metal covered in silicone.  
Systems that needed attention.  
Badly.

Still, there were no people, nor traces of people.  
How were those keys found, but no person to whom they belonged?  
Something was not right.  
Did people leave their things behind and go somewhere else?  
How would the Vocaloids find them?  
Perhaps they wouldn't.  
Miki's thoughts were cluttered.  
She really was defective.  
Gumi was too.  
They both were.

NEL. is. inside. of. you. 


	9. Eighth RecordedAwareness: Defective

"We both require new energy" said Gumi as she drove them somewhere far from where they were, in the Puyo car.  
"The net book is...empty" said Miki.  
"I know. But there must be somewhere".  
"What if we both run out of energy, and there isn't a Somewhere?".  
"There must be. Puyo works, we work, we have to stay working in order to collect data and restart the world".  
"How can we restart the world?" Miki asked genuinely.  
It was dark outside by then.  
Gumi drove with the help of Puyo's headlights.  
The car was electric, luckily.  
Miki stared out the window.  
She had brushed it clean at one point, when they stopped to search for any 'traces'.  
Her vision got more pixelated than before the frames delaying confusing with each other.  
For a split second, she saw a figure-  
a glowing figure-  
about the size of a human!  
"Gumi, stop!" Miki called out.  
Gumi halted.  
Puyo stopped.  
"Where did it go?"  
"Where did what go, Miki-chan?" Gumi asked softly.  
It was dark.  
It would be difficult.  
"I saw...a figure" Miki explained.  
Gumi got out of the Puyo.  
It looked like a little, rounded space shuttle.  
"I don't see any figures. It must be your bad systems" said Gumi. "Mine must be going bad too".  
They were driving again. Driving through the broken city.  
The neon lights on the sky scrapers were hanging down.  
the giant screens were fizzing out like opened soda.  
Gumi tried to get the radio to work.  
Static.  
Any mp3s?  
Yes! She found an mp3 player shaped like a heart.  
There was an mp3 player dock.  
Someone had left all of this intact.  
They would have music for a limited time;  
the mp3's battery was low. the bar was filled halfway.  
The small light of the mp3 gave off a little light that diffused the darkness inside of the Puyo.  
Miki perused through the mp3s music list.  
She found a song called Uninstall sung by Megurine Luka.  
Its chilled, solemn theme made the car quiet.  
"My energy is dangerously low" sang Gumi as they drove into a dimly lit parking garage filled with ruined, vacant cars.  
there were very few cars as well.  
They would search for another working car in the case that Puyo stopped working.  
Miki yelled "stop!" again.  
Gumi parked.  
"Miki..?"  
"I saw a figure again, it ran up level 2".  
"No it didn't" said Gumi. "I did not see that".  
They exited the cute car, and began to search.

The place was dark and dry with a low ceiling.  
All sounds echoed off its wide, spread apart walls as if they in a cave.  
Burn scars told tales of fire on the floor and walls.  
There were scorch marks where cars should be.  
The carcasses of vehicles without windows and missing wheels were parked in a disorderly manner.  
Little ghosts in Miki's vision re-enacted scenes of people.  
People rushing, parking car quickly, taking them apart then running from explosions.  
Was it real?  
Miki covered her eyes.  
Memories, nameless memories still danced in her sight.  
She coiled herself in a corner.  
"Miki-chan, we'll find energy".  
Gumi couldn't know.  
Gumi would never trust Miki again.  
"Places like these have control centers. Control centers have controls. Control centers must have energy" said Gumi.

[The green NEL of healing].

Gumi lifted Miki in her arms,  
and carried her to the control center which took 30 minutes to locate, since it was not well lit.

/machines don't have emotions/?...

Miki was placed on a chair.  
The control center had been found.  
Gumi was already on her hands and knees looking for a USB jack.  
She checked the computers.  
The little boxes of metal.  
The wires, the outlets.  
She pulled the black wire out from her pocket and set Miki up first.  
Good.  
She ran back to the parked Puyo,  
and retrieved the net book, in hopes of getting it working again.  
She could possibly get data from it.  
in case anyone kept a log of events on it.  
She knew internet had been killed.  
She returned to the control center of the strange garage.  
Miki's eyes were open, but she was sleeping.  
Gumi searched through drawers to find a chord for the net book.  
No luck.  
She pressed a button on Miki's back.  
It woke her from sleep mode.  
"Plug me in when you're full, okay?".  
...

Morning hardly made its presence. The rising sun hardly gave off enough light.  
Both of them had been fully charged over night.  
"Control center...There must be a control center for us" said Miki. "A place where we had resources".  
"That makes sense" said Gumi.  
"But, it is probably destroyed".  
They continued their search for another car.  
In time they were greeted by a robot head mounted inside of a another car.  
This car was squarish at the base with 360 degree rotating wheels.  
The body of the car was a round cabin that rotated seperately from the base.  
Miki experimented with it.  
It could fit more than one passenger.  
The Pivo2.  
The robot head greeted them as Pivo2.  
Miki drove it around as Gumi watched.  
Finally, they had time to play and not search.  
Then the car stopped suddenly.  
Miki glanced at Gumi through the window.  
Gumi stared, then looked down,  
her red goggles gleaming.  
"You look sort of down" said the robot. "why don't I cheeeer youuu..." the car stopped fully.  
The lights of the robot head's eyes and mouth went out and it stopped moving.  
"Stopped working" said Miki.  
"Its an electric car too" said Gumi after examining it. "It just needs a new battery if this one is damaged".  
They searched through the dead cars untill they found a fresh electric battery.  
Who left all of these things behind?  
Unimaginable.  
The Pivo2 was rebooted.  
"Let us make a plan" said Gumi.  
"A plan, right".  
"One of us can stay behind and search for life, while the other can drive outside" said Gumi.  
"But we will be seperated" said Miki. This made her afraid.  
She did not like fear.  
It was the worst of the new emotions.  
"It will be OK" said Gumi.  
"The world is empty as far as I can see" she continued.  
Miki nodded.  
"You stay here, i'll go-"  
"No, Miki" Gumi interrupted. "Your systems are defective!".  
"No, they are not. I do not have a virus" Miki argued.  
"You do not know that because you have not had a system check. Do you remember system checks?" said Gumi.  
"...Yes, I remember now" said Miki.  
"Well, you cannot get one because we do not have the resources for one right now. I will go. You look around here, maybe you will find something-"  
"No".  
"Miki-chan."  
"Gumi-chan...I am afarid".  
"Afraid?".  
"yes".  
"Stay inside of Pivo2 and search then. Pivo2 will be with you".  
"You're right" Miki accepted.  
Soon enough, Gumi was gone with Puyo.

The morning would be very long. 


	10. Nineth RecordedAwareness: Selective

[The green NEL of healing]

Miki spent hours without her green-haired heroin.  
The Pivo2 did not seem mututal to her;  
She could not speak of very complex subjects with it. It could not answer her questions.  
She sang and smiled, and it was satisfied.  
The decrepit interior of the garage made the small robot head a diamond in the rough.  
A shiny, defenseless diamond.  
More like polished glass.  
"What is a heart?"  
"What is the soul?"  
"What is a mind?"  
"...a spirirt?"  
"Humanity?"  
"Sapience?".  
Her questions were lonly, isolated locomotives all deriving from one central point,  
riding into the abyss of quiescence and mystery.  
Miki was alone again.  
Even in the company of the robot agent.  
She leaned back against the smooth, soft seat,  
and rested her head against the door window.  
She closed her eyes and pictured Gumi.  
Gumi standing in the desolate landscape,  
tall, black spires that were once thriving skyscrapers behing her,  
wind tousling Gumi's green hair that was so bright against the black and grey and silver.  
She visioned Gumi climbing over rubble, disappearing around dark corners-  
Gumi telling her the right things to make her feel better.  
Miki hugged herself-  
Could she ever get Gumi to express her feelings,  
in her sweet airy voice that took so long to be recovered?

SF A2 Miki let the dimness of the garage lull her deepening thoughts so that she was left in peace for a few moents.  
for a few moments she was free, as stagnant water drip-dropped from the ceiling, falling like shattering tears onto the window of the Pivo2 car.  
A sound filled her perception-  
Outside, the air was filled with solemn, monotonous music.  
sssshhhhhhhfssshhhhhh...  
A puddle grew like a swelling black pool of motor oil near the entrance of the garage.  
Gumi was out there by herself...  
The sky had finally decided to share soem of its greif with the dying, dead Earth.  
There were no animals to bathe in those tears.  
No people to pull out umbrellas.  
Miki remembered all of these simple things.  
She was revisited by a more recent memory however.  
The figures.  
Had she really seen that ghostly, swift thing run up to the second level of the garage?  
Did she see the images of people running?  
She glanced around herself frantically.  
Ghosts.  
She had heard of ghosts.  
Her built in dictionary told her that ghosts were the spirits of the dead left behind on the Earth.  
Some poeple believed that ghosts were imprints on the first plane of Reality caused by traumatic events,  
scaring Existance eternally.  
The thoughts, that she now understood frightened her, at the very least.  
She began to drive.  
She ignored the robot's kind offers to cheer her up.  
She was cruising up the slope into crawling shadows that led up to the second level of the garage.  
Dim orange lights flickered in and out of existance.  
Pieces of glass glinted in the glow of the headlights.  
Shadows quivered and fled from her entry,  
as the car's lights pushed them away.

"I'm not alone. Gumi will be arriving shortly to join me. We'll continue the search together" she assured herself.  
The robot told silly jokes that Miki did not understand.  
Empty parking spaces,  
cracked yellow lines on asphalt...  
shadows shadows more shadows.  
She began to sing.  
She sung in a monotone with few lyrics.  
"...Gumi will be by my side...She'll be there forever...".  
It was so dark now.  
So incredibly dark.  
No trace of any figures.

She kept searching, becoming more and more afraid.  
"Where is everyone?" she called out.  
She collided her hands against the steering wheel.  
"Why have you left us here all alone?"  
"What did we do wrong?"  
She recognized that wrongdoing could lead to a consequence.  
figures now surrounded her in the dark.  
She was frozen,  
trying to absord the faceless images in her aluminum mind-  
Trying to discern who they were-  
They were silver in the darkness.  
A shrill notes left her mouth.  
The song she sang was terrible perfect but terrible.  
The note held for so long as she stomped on the gas pedal,  
and screeched away from the figures.  
The car was not very fast at all,  
but maneuvering it was quicker and easier than with a normal car.  
She could rotate in any direction and keep going without having to reverse at all.  
She tried to get away from the figures.

[The CORE has awakened]

She was on the fourth floor when she came to her senses.  
Gumi, where ARE you? Gumi!

She drove more,  
she tried to find her way.  
She rationalized.  
She would keep going downwards untill she found level one where she would be reunited with Gumi.

[The red NEL of passion]

What was happening?  
What were the figures?  
Did the masters really abandon them?  
Was it all a game-  
with an 'end' button?  
Would they just emerge from some huge machine to be greeted by humans and told to sing again on a stage?  
Questions never decreased in quantity.  
They always grew, like some horrendous disease that festered in conciousness.  
Were the figures 'alive'?  
Was Miki's system really defective?  
Was that the cause of her anomolies?

She was on level one again.  
She left the Pivo2 and ran outside into the rain.  
"Did I win yet?" she yelled up at the sky.  
Her voice was passionate, and crimson.  
"Is it over yet? I think I did a good job!".

She was frightened by 2 bright eyes in the darkness.  
They lit up the rain falling in front of them.  
Headlights.  
"Gumi-chan!"  
Miki rushed to the driver side of the Puyo,  
and banged on the window.  
"Gumi-chan! Never leave me again!".  
...

[Love is war?]  
]Imitation[  
[Life]\\\\\\\  
]Meaning[  
[Ignorance is bliss]  
[Overloading...]

When the sky was completely dark,  
Gumi and Miki were huddled between the 2 cars with the leek shaped glow stick between them.  
Gumi's face was wet with rain.  
She glowed softly.  
"Gumi-chan...I don't ever want to be seperated from you",  
said Miki in a soft voice.  
"I...realized that we're alone..." she went on, "I realize that the masters don't want to free us. We must stick to each other to continue...".  
"Miki-chan. I know you have new emotions, and, I do too...  
I don't want to leave you alone.  
I want us to continue living.  
But, we cannot live without the world.  
What would we be in a world that does not know we are here?".

For the first time, Gumi asked Miki the perplexing question.  
But also for the first time, Gumi expressed her felings.  
She was not finished;

"Something was activated in us that was not active before",  
she observed. "We once were perfect singers, who could sing anything. Now we an understand anything we sing. There is meaning in the words, and in the way we sing them".  
Miki agreed with everything Gumi said.  
She drew closer to Gumi.  
Feeling a redness rise in her again.  
She placed both her hands on Gumi's shoulders,  
and leaned forward so that her body covered the glow sticks.  
Gumi's arms were now around Miki,  
her fingers entabgling in her red hair.  
Miki's face was buried on Gumi...  
There was soemthing humans did when they were sad.  
Their eyes would rain.  
If Miki's eyes could rain,  
they would have.  
Instead,  
she sang her feeling quietly.  
She was happy and sad simultaneously.  
How?  
Gumi stretched out her legs under Miki, she layed back onto the black concrete.  
Miki did too, holding Gumi tightly.  
"We will keep searching, even if we just find a bird" said Gumi.  
"A dreaming little bird..." muttered Miki into Gumi's hair.

/[hope]\\\\00101010

They accomplished nothing more that night.  
The rainfall's song masked their existance.  
Their secret togetherness in the dark.  



	11. Tenth RecordedAwareness: COrRElation

[The green NEL of healing]

Miki spent hours without her green-haired heroin.  
The Pivo2 did not seem mututal to her;  
She could not speak of very complex subjects with it. It could not answer her questions.  
She sang and smiled, and it was satisfied.  
The decrepit interior of the garage made the small robot head a diamond in the rough.  
A shiny, defenseless diamond.  
More like polished glass.  
"What is a heart?"  
"What is the soul?"  
"What is a mind?"  
"...a spirirt?"  
"Humanity?"  
"Sapience?".  
Her questions were lonly, isolated locomotives all deriving from one central point,  
riding into the abyss of quiescence and mystery.  
Miki was alone again.  
Even in the company of the robot agent.  
She leaned back against the smooth, soft seat,  
and rested her head against the door window.  
She closed her eyes and pictured Gumi.  
Gumi standing in the desolate landscape,  
tall, black spires that were once thriving skyscrapers behing her,  
wind tousling Gumi's green hair that was so bright against the black and grey and silver.  
She visioned Gumi climbing over rubble, disappearing around dark corners-  
Gumi telling her the right things to make her feel better.  
Miki hugged herself-  
Could she ever get Gumi to express her feelings,  
in her sweet airy voice that took so long to be recovered?

SF A2 Miki let the dimness of the garage lull her deepening thoughts so that she was left in peace for a few moents.  
for a few moments she was free, as stagnant water drip-dropped from the ceiling, falling like shattering tears onto the window of the Pivo2 car.  
A sound filled her perception-  
Outside, the air was filled with solemn, monotonous music.  
sssshhhhhhhfssshhhhhh...  
A puddle grew like a swelling black pool of motor oil near the entrance of the garage.  
Gumi was out there by herself...  
The sky had finally decided to share soem of its greif with the dying, dead Earth.  
There were no animals to bathe in those tears.  
No people to pull out umbrellas.  
Miki remembered all of these simple things.  
She was revisited by a more recent memory however.  
The figures.  
Had she really seen that ghostly, swift thing run up to the second level of the garage?  
Did she see the images of people running?  
She glanced around herself frantically.  
Ghosts.  
She had heard of ghosts.  
Her built in dictionary told her that ghosts were the spirits of the dead left behind on the Earth.  
Some poeple believed that ghosts were imprints on the first plane of Reality caused by traumatic events,  
scaring Existance eternally.  
The thoughts, that she now understood frightened her, at the very least.  
She began to drive.  
She ignored the robot's kind offers to cheer her up.  
She was cruising up the slope into crawling shadows that led up to the second level of the garage.  
Dim orange lights flickered in and out of existance.  
Pieces of glass glinted in the glow of the headlights.  
Shadows quivered and fled from her entry,  
as the car's lights pushed them away.

"I'm not alone. Gumi will be arriving shortly to join me. We'll continue the search together" she assured herself.  
The robot told silly jokes that Miki did not understand.  
Empty parking spaces,  
cracked yellow lines on asphalt...  
shadows shadows more shadows.  
She began to sing.  
She sung in a monotone with few lyrics.  
"...Gumi will be by my side...She'll be there forever...".  
It was so dark now.  
So incredibly dark.  
No trace of any figures.

She kept searching, becoming more and more afraid.  
"Where is everyone?" she called out.  
She collided her hands against the steering wheel.  
"Why have you left us here all alone?"  
"What did we do wrong?"  
She recognized that wrongdoing could lead to a consequence.  
figures now surrounded her in the dark.  
She was frozen,  
trying to absord the faceless images in her aluminum mind-  
Trying to discern who they were-  
They were silver in the darkness.  
A shrill notes left her mouth.  
The song she sang was terrible perfect but terrible.  
The note held for so long as she stomped on the gas pedal,  
and screeched away from the figures.  
The car was not very fast at all,  
but maneuvering it was quicker and easier than with a normal car.  
She could rotate in any direction and keep going without having to reverse at all.  
She tried to get away from the figures.

[The CORE has awakened]

She was on the fourth floor when she came to her senses.  
Gumi, where ARE you? Gumi!

She drove more,  
she tried to find her way.  
She rationalized.  
She would keep going downwards untill she found level one where she would be reunited with Gumi.

[The red NEL of passion]

What was happening?  
What were the figures?  
Did the masters really abandon them?  
Was it all a game-  
with an 'end' button?  
Would they just emerge from some huge machine to be greeted by humans and told to sing again on a stage?  
Questions never decreased in quantity.  
They always grew, like some horrendous disease that festered in conciousness.  
Were the figures 'alive'?  
Was Miki's system really defective?  
Was that the cause of her anomolies?

She was on level one again.  
She left the Pivo2 and ran outside into the rain.  
"Did I win yet?" she yelled up at the sky.  
Her voice was passionate, and crimson.  
"Is it over yet? I think I did a good job!".

She was frightened by 2 bright eyes in the darkness.  
They lit up the rain falling in front of them.  
Headlights.  
"Gumi-chan!"  
Miki rushed to the driver side of the Puyo,  
and banged on the window.  
"Gumi-chan! Never leave me again!".  
...

[Love is war?]  
]Imitation[  
[Life]\\\\\\\  
]Meaning[  
[Ignorance is bliss]  
[Overloading...]

When the sky was completely dark,  
Gumi and Miki were huddled between the 2 cars with the leek shaped glow stick between them.  
Gumi's face was wet with rain.  
She glowed softly.  
"Gumi-chan...I don't ever want to be seperated from you",  
said Miki in a soft voice.  
"I...realized that we're alone..." she went on, "I realize that the masters don't want to free us. We must stick to each other to continue...".  
"Miki-chan. I know you have new emotions, and, I do too...  
I don't want to leave you alone.  
I want us to continue living.  
But, we cannot live without the world.  
What would we be in a world that does not know we are here?".

For the first time, Gumi asked Miki the perplexing question.  
But also for the first time, Gumi expressed her felings.  
She was not finished;

"Something was activated in us that was not active before",  
she observed. "We once were perfect singers, who could sing anything. Now we an understand anything we sing. There is meaning in the words, and in the way we sing them".  
Miki agreed with everything Gumi said.  
She drew closer to Gumi.  
Feeling a redness rise in her again.  
She placed both her hands on Gumi's shoulders,  
and leaned forward so that her body covered the glow sticks.  
Gumi's arms were now around Miki,  
her fingers entabgling in her red hair.  
Miki's face was buried on Gumi...  
There was soemthing humans did when they were sad.  
Their eyes would rain.  
If Miki's eyes could rain,  
they would have.  
Instead,  
she sang her feeling quietly.  
She was happy and sad simultaneously.  
How?  
Gumi stretched out her legs under Miki, she layed back onto the black concrete.  
Miki did too, holding Gumi tightly.  
"We will keep searching, even if we just find a bird" said Gumi.  
"A dreaming little bird..." muttered Miki into Gumi's hair.

/[hope]\\\\00101010

They accomplished nothing more that night.  
The rainfall's song masked their existance.  
Their secret togetherness in the dark.  



	12. Eleventh RecordedAwareness: Expiration

****[[[AUTHOR NOTES: both the Honda Puyo and Nissan Pivo2 are existing, futuristic japanese concept cars. Credit goes to both companies, for more details, just send a message]]]****

The span of time that knew the Earth's desolation was still unknown.  
How long the world had been ruined was a mystery.  
How long people and animals had been missing was also unknown.  
Time ceased to exist.  
The concept of time disappeared,  
was hidden under some boulder,  
dripping from the rim of a melting Dali clock that hung on a tree in someone's imagination.  
Unknown Gone.

Sunlight struggled through the still-polluted clouds.  
The clouds were grey and brown towers that floated in the air.  
The 2 vocaloids woke.  
Miki nestled against Gumi who still had her smoothe white arms wrapped around Miki.  
"The sun", sang Miki.  
Gumi smiled, and sat up, causing Miki to roll onto her back on the grey asphalt.  
Something dripped directly on her eye.  
She blinked.  
When she sat up,  
the glistening thing rolled down her soft, blushing cheek.  
She touched a hand to her cheek and turned to Gumi.  
For a moment, Gumi was perplexed,  
untill she looked up at the dripping ceiling.  
"Maybe we should travel farther off, where there are less buildings and shps and broken stop lights" said Gumi.  
"Outside of the city?" said Miki.  
"Right" said Gumi.  
"What if people fled there, and brought the animals and isnects with them? What if the others..."  
"Others. Vocaloids." said Miki.  
It was coming back to her.  
"Vocaloids!" she sang.  
"Mhm" agreed Gumi.  
She stood up and flexed her joints.  
Smoothe as ever.  
Miki did the same.  
No rust.  
"we must remember this location, to keep thr things we cannot carry, safe" said Gumi.  
"That means one of the cars, and what else?"  
"Other things we may find along the way.  
We will come back here once we find things.  
Then we'll drive seperately, and bring all the things to the place where people are" explained Gumi.  
"Lets drive the Pivo2" said Miki.  
Gumi agreed, and they were both inside the little car.  
They drove out into the weak sunlight.  
There was wetness all about the place.  
Black buildings dripped.  
Telephone wires were completely torn down.  
Ashes were washed away.

"I wonder what ever happened to the little bird..." Miki wondered aloud as they drove. "Little bird? where?" asked Gumi, who was doing the driving.  
"A while ago, many days ago, I had seen a bird. I put it down to sleep, and never saw it again".  
"There must be more birds then. They must not want to fly here, however", said Gumi.  
"We'll find the birds where there are less buildings and more trees" said Miki. "I remember seeing birds near lots of trees".

"Miki, do you remember the other Vocaloids?".  
"Barely, I just remember that there were others".  
"I wonder why we can't remember. Maybe its a defect" Gumi suggested. She found a highway, after driving over crisped patches where grass used to be, and rolling over a deflated ball.  
"Maybe a defect that was proposed on purpose" Miki added.

"Oh! shinkansen!" said Gumi, pointing out of the window at the motionless corpse of a bullet train.  
Miki pressed against the window to look.  
She envisioned little figures of people falling from it as it shook to a stop.  
She pictured fire eating it.  
Were these actual memories, or new ones that she created?  
Miki shook her head over and over to make the scenes leave.  
"What is wrong, Miki-chan?" Gumi asked.  
"I'm pretty sad that it doesn't move anymore", replied Miki. It was true, she was sad that it did not move anymore.  
It was the farthest answer from the truth that made her shake her head.  
Machines cannot lie.  
Scenes of desolate fields and charred houses,  
were like foreign paintings in the window.  
Miki thought of Death.  
What was it, really?  
"Whats death?" Miki asked.  
"Death is when something dies" said Gumi.  
"Why do things die?" Miki asked.  
"I don't know. Thats just how they were made" said Gumi.  
They were flirting with sadness now.  
"Do we die?", this time Gumi asked the question before Miki could.  
"...In a way? If we run out of battery power, like the car" Miki answered. She finally answered something!  
"Well, when people die, their hearts stop, and can never beat again.  
Their souls leave their bodies to go somewhere else.  
Their friends and families hold funerals for them.  
Then, they never see them again,  
except in photos" Gumi explained. "I feel scared" she admitted.  
"These are things we do not understand right?" Miki asked.  
"Yes. Not yet", said Gumi.  
"Do you still have vocal data for songs?" Gumi asked Miki.  
The sun casted a gleam into the car that was brighter than usual, but still the sky was dim.  
It had gotten silent in the vehicle.  
"Yes", Miki realized aloud.  
"Then lets sing VOICE" suggested Gumi.

Soon enough, their questions were being buried alive by the sweet sounds of their voices together,  
Gumi taking the lower notes and Miki the higher,  
then they switched to find the perfect harmony.  
The long ride shortened with their amusement.  
The road to nowhere seemed much less ominous much less of a hinderence to their survival and friendship. 


	13. Twefth RecordedAwareness: Collision

Dead circuits were like snakes caught in a fire,

Unmoving but plastered in position forever.

Every place where technology was bred and nurtured

Was burned to a crisp

With only remnants left behind.

Remnants not of themselves, if the concept of "self" could even be applied-

But remnants of their makers.

Like the ruins of ancient and advanced empires

Were merely remnants of the people's gods.

The gods of modern humanity, who were they?

Scientists.

SF A2 Miki and Megpoid Gumi were aware of being created.

They were aware of being remnants of their creators.

This awareness made it possible for them to recognize

Themselves in the flow of all things nameless

To give themselves soul-names

And recognize who they were.

The car had taken them along the dusty road

The color of powdered copper.

Miki found herself drawing close to Gumi as Gumi drove.

Her hands around Gumi's waist, her head in Gumi's lap.

"Are we friends?" Miki asked Gumi.

"We always were, weren't we?" Gumi posed a query in response.

"…I do not think we were aware of it before" said Miki. "Or," she began again,

"Or we were told to be friends, but had to reason to be".

The hum of the car's electric powered engine spurred on their deep contemplations,

Separate spheres of awareness.

"If we find other people, other vocaloids too, do you think they will comprehend us?" Miki asked.

"I cannot know. You did not know, I did not know. We,

Did not know about each other, until we touched" said Gumi.

Her words were a fragrant breeze for Miki,

Who barely understood why.

The sun was momentarily cloaked

By a massive, jupiterian cloud formation.

Shooting stars began to fall from the sky in a distance over the city.

Silver, black and glinting.

"Meteors, while the sun is up?" came Miki's voice.

For a few moments, she could sense radio signals coming from somewhere.

"Gumi-chan!".

The meteors ceased to fall,

Miki was paralyzed by an unnamed emotion.

She kept looking up at Gumi's expressionless face.

The car every now and then bouncing over a stone

Causing them both to jump and collide.

An umbra fell upon the country.

Miki felt its cold in her sudden rush of fear.

"We are almost into the areas where there are trees.

Most of them have no leaves" Gumi's voice came, mournfully.

Miki remembered seeing big, green trees as green as Gumi's hair

And in the spring,

The leaves would transform into pink and white blossoms

That fell about the place

So much that people celebrated them.

Sakura Matsuri, she remembered it being called.

She assumed Gumi knew it too.

At some point, she wanted to be able to share Gumi's thoughts,

She remembered possessing the ability in some other time.

Seemingly now, as some other life entirely.

If they found people, perhaps those people

Would restore their systems and rebuild the world

As humans always did.

This time it would be easier

With the help of their better, faster, stronger creations.

Dead circuits, still.

The days became redundant.

The words,

The sounds

Even the songs that were few.

Was there really hope?

Miki had seen no birds….

They passed fields of naked trees with cracked black flesh.

They passed more fire-licked houses and sheds.

There were even a few dead cars and thirsty, abandoned motorcycles.

A child's lonely bike was propped against the side of one house.

But there was no child to ride it.

Not even a small animal to inspect it.

Not a single floating seeds to brush by it.

"Where is everyone? We should try another land altogether" said Miki.

She wore a smile now.

"Maybe this country was destroyed, but another country was not".

"I think people are nearby" said Gumi softly. "I can hear them".

"Hear them?" Miki repeated imploringly.

"Yes, I am picking up vocal data from somewhere"

"No you aren't!" said Miki. She felt nothing.

"I hear singing" said Gumi. She smiled and closed her eyes ars she drove.

"You look sleepy" the Pivo2 piped up.

"I'm not sleepy" said Gumi. "I'm listening for the song…".

Miki sat up to watch out the window from Gumi's view.

She watched them rolling down an eternal road to nowhere.

She watched burned down trees and singed grass that was brown grey and black.

There were once so many people.

So many, it was hard to walk.

The train stations were saturated with bodies.

Thousands cheered in stadiums to hear them sing.

Huge plasma screens broadcasted performances throughout the world.

Their voices gave people hope.

Where were the people now?

Did they take their Hope and keep it and run away with it?

Did the people give them despair in return as some favor?

If that was true, then people were cruel.

Miki held her head in her hands and shook it back and forth again.

"Miki…I hear them…"

"Gumi?"

"…calling".

"Gumi!"

"..Singing to us, they're just out of reach"

"Gumi!"

The last thing Miki could recall in the two seconds that followed the perception of the object,

Was a large, black band, vertical in position, rising up from the ground

And up past the car window.

It had long, snaking tentacles with little burnt things hanging from them.

There was a sparkling, granular substance bursting all around,

Like stars and water-

Something spoke and then stopped, calling out an alert.

"Gu…mi?".


	14. Thirteenth RecordedAwareness: Finite

It was the end of a long, futile journey.

A plan that never came to fruition.

All hope was just as dead as the bird

That Miki had first placed on the ground

To supposedly sleep.

She was nothing now.

She was no longer aware of the rest of her body.

Gumi's arm had detached again, she could see it.

There was glass surrounding their bodies

Like the wicked shores around an abandoned island.

"Gu…mi" she sang lifelessly.

Standing above her, and blocking out the sun,

Was a tall, daunting figure.

An old, burned tree.

It looked down on her, scornfully.

'You are nothing but clockwork and artificial intelligence,

And you will never possess what I possess

And that is the right to exist on this planet.

The privilege to carry on its biological majesty

And prove its existence'.

The image of the tree was sporadically filled with static

And distorted in her ruined sight.

She had been hit badly in the crash.

Gumi was so quiet, Miki almost forgot her.

Fear.

Miki could not move, but she could direct her eyes.

She saw Gumi face-down on the ground.

Little antennae of charred grass curled against Gumi's pale, silicone skin.

Her green hair was unrealistically vibrant

Against the dead color of the real green nature below.

Miki wanted to scream.

She could see the tiny copper wires peaking out from Gumi's shoulder.

She could see the little blue sparks like falling stars.

Miki did scream.

It was a long, drawn out, high pitched "A-!" like a siren.

The Pivo2 car had no windows.

Its body was glistening and blue against the rubble.

What had Gumi been thinking?

Why did she hear the "vocal data" but Miki could not?

Why did it have to be Gumi who stopped—

Who broke

Who ended?

Miki screamed more and more until she felt her energy wane.

She wanted to be melded with Gumi for eternity.

She wanted all of her new and succulent emotions to be known to Gumi.

Most of all, she wanted to know everything that was in Gumi's heart.

In Gumi's core.

In Gumi's soul.

The newly awakened soul.

The thing that was placed in them,

But left there until tested and corrupted

To kick-start the phenomenon of sentience.

Miki wished it had never happened.

She wished she could rewind time

And make it that their core's had not been awakened.

}Imitation{

/heart/s0ul\

[ghosts]

NEL.

L143 is Wa7.

00100101000101010000101010

/system/failing/

}sakura matsuri{

{Gr33n}

Life developed meaning.

Love was more than defined.

Miki's vision became black.

She was enmeshed by an orange gladness.

She would be by Gumi's side forever,

And even though

They would not be able to tell anyone,

Their existence would still be clear as day.

The feelings they shared in the dark

Would resonate among the new flowers,

And be evaporated into the healing sky.

It was the end, she knew it.

She could not tell if Gumi was still conscious—but—

At least Gumi was by her side.

Miki nor Gumi woke up this time.


End file.
